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Sunday, October 12, 2014

Women’s sporting rights put Saudi Arabia and Iran on the defensive

The struggle for women’s rights to engage in sports and
attend sporting events has commanded increased attention with the hunger strike
of a British-Iranian national incarcerated in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison,
the expected arrival in Saudi Arabia of Australian women fans for the Asian
Champions League final, and the rare appearance of Saudi women in an all-male
stadium in Abu Dhabi.

The issue of women’s rights also rose on the international
sporting agenda with the withdrawal of the Qatari women’s basketball team from
the recent Asian Games after they were banned from wearing a headdress. The incident
underlined the fact that women’s rights also includes the right to compete with
headwear that meets safety and security standards and is culturally acceptable.

In response to the withdrawal, the International Basketball
Federation (FIBA) said it would next year ease the ban. Soccer paved the way
for accommodating religiously observant women athletes with FIFA’s acceptance
two years ago of the principle that women were allowed to wear approved
headgear.

The increased attention on women’s sporting rights has put
Saudi Arabia and Iran, the two Middle Eastern nations that ban women from entry
into stadia during competitions, on the defensive and raises questions about
the international sporting community’s forcefulness in opposing restrictions that
violate fundamental rights. International Olympics Committee (IOC) president
Thomas Bach said after last month meeting Saudi Arabia’s newly appointed Olympic
chief Prince Abdullah bin Mosaad bin Abdulaziz that women’s rights was being
discussed.

Human Rights Watch last week called on the kingdom to make
clear what steps it was taking to ensure that women are included in international
competitions and able to participate in sports generally. Saudi Arabia failed
to field women athletes at the recent Asian Games after it was forced by the IOC
to allow all of two expatriate women to compete in the 2012 London Olympics.

The degree to which Saudi Arabia feels pressured by increasingly
unsustainable restrictions on women’s sports was evident in Saudi responses to
criticism. Rather than point to the kingdom’s long-standing denial of women’s
rights rooted in culture and justified by a puritan interpretation of Islam, Mohammed
al-Mishal, the secretary-general of Saudi Arabia's Olympic Committee, said that
Saudi Arabia did not have women athletes who would have qualified for the 2014
Asian Games.

Mr. Al-Mishal however indicated that despite Saudi Arabia’s
promise to field women athletes at the 2016 Olympics in Rio Janeiro they would
be limited to sports endorsed by a literal interpretation of the Qur’an. The
Saudi official said the kingdom was training women to compete in equestrian,
fencing, shooting, and archery Olympic contest which are "accepted
culturally and religiously in Saudi Arabia".

Human Rights Watch Middle East and North Africa director
Sarah Leah Whitson dismissed Mr. Al-Mishal’s defence as excuses. “Two years
after the London Olympics, the time for excuses is over – Saudi Arabia needs to
end its discrimination against women and ensure women’s right to participate in
sport on an equal basis with men... Limiting women’s participation to specific
sports is yet another example of Saudi Arabia’s refusal to allow women to
compete on an equal basis with men,” Ms. Whitson said.

Despite the restrictions, Saudi Arabia has taken small steps
towards expanding women’s ability to engage in sports. The country’s Shura
Council, a consultative assembly, has urged the education ministry to study the
possibility of introducing physical education for girls in public schools. The
move could lead to a lifting of the ban on female sports in public schools.

Moreover. authorities last year began licensing private
sports clubs for women. Saudi Arabia has further struggled for years with
proposals to build separate women’s sections in stadia – a move that has been staunchly
resisted by the country’s conservatives. Manal Al-Dabbagh nevertheless became
in August the first Saudi woman photographer to be allowed to photograph a
soccer match in a stadium.

Writing on CNN’s website, Lina K. Almaeena, a prominent
Saudi promoter of women’s sports, noted that Saudi officials have promised
enhanced opportunities for women for years. Ms. Almaeena said those promises
remained unfulfilled because of “logistical challenges” such as a lack of
profession female professionals and adequate space that would ensure that women
are shielded from the view of men. As a result, the government has yet to
include physical education in the curricula of girls’ schools and enable women
to use neighbourhood facilities and train for international competitions.

With the exception of the Equestrian Federation, women are
not members of the boards of Saudi sporting associations. The absence of women
board members in the case of the Saudi soccer association violates a decision
of the West Asian Football Federation that obliges its members to put women’s
soccer rights on par with those of men and include women on their boards.

The controversy and domestic battles that women’s sports
evokes was recently evident on social media in response to a YouTube video viewed
by nearly half a million people. The video showed a rare female Saudi soccer
fan clad in traditional all enveloping dress cheering her club, Al Hilal, against
the United Arab Emirates’ Al Ain in an Asian Champions League match. The UAE
contrary to the kingdom does not bar women from stadia. The woman is seen
shouting in frustration at a bad tackle on the pitch. As she shakes her fist in
anger, her sleeve rolls up and exposes her lower arm.

Commenters on the video lined up on both sides of the
argument with 1,826 dislikes and 969 likes. In support of the woman, one
commenter denounced segregation rooted in the kingdom’s adherence to Salafism,
a diverse Islamic trend that seeks to emulate life at the time of the Prophet
Mohammed and his immediate successors, as the product of “a sick and obsessed
mind.” An opponent reiterated that “we do not allow women to have 100% freedom…
Most Muslim women agree with this...so I don't understand how most of the world’s
women wear tight clothes and walk half naked on the streets and beaches as if
it were normal ..! Don’t these women have brothers or fathers???”

A Saudi psychiatrist warned in July that women’s passion for
soccer constituted a need to release pent-up energy and imitate others that
endangered a woman’s role in a conservative Muslim society.

The issue of women’s stadium attendance will present itself
again when Australia’s Western Sydney Wanderers meet Al Hilal in the Asian
Champions League finals in Riyadh on November 1. Australian media have
expressed concern whether female and Jewish supporters would be granted visas
for the match. Saudi Arabia has long lifted its restrictions on allowing Jews
into the kingdom and has in the recent past facilitated attendance of sporting
events by Brazilian and New Zealand women fans when their teams were visiting
the country.

The granting of entry to stadia to foreign women supporting
a visiting team has sparked heated debate in Saudi Arabia. Controversy erupted
in February when a group of female American Congressional staffers were allowed
to attend a match in a Riyadh stadium from which Saudi women were barred.

Saudi Arabia’s failure to forcefully act on repeated
promises and follow-up on its concession to pressure to field women athletes at
the London Olympics like the imprisonment of 25-year old British-Iranian dual
national Ghoncheh Ghavami suggests that achieving women’s sporting rights is a
lengthy battle. International pressure will likely have to involve more than
efforts at quiet behind-the-scenes persuasion.

Ms. Ghavami was charged with spreading propaganda against
the Iranian government after she attempted in June with more than a dozen other
women to enter a stadium where the Iranian national men’s volleyball team was
playing Italy. To be fair, Iran in contrast to Saudi Arabia encourages women’s
sports even if it bars women from stadia.

Writing in The Guardian, journalist and author Azadeh
Moaveni argued in the case of Ms. Ghavami that international pressure on Iran
to adhere to human rights standards would be more effective and “seem less a
political tool to batter Iran when it is expedient than a permanent concern” if
the Islamic republic’s critics “strive for is consistency, including human
rights concerns as part of the ongoing political approach to Iran so that it
becomes a fixed expectation in Tehran as well.” That is true not only for Iran
but also the struggle for women’s sporting and human rights in Saudi Arabia as
well as elsewhere in the world.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam
School of International Studies as Nanyang Technological University in
Singapore, co-director of the Institute of Fan Culture of the University of
Würzburg and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East
Soccer, and a forthcoming book with the same title.

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About Me

James M DorseyWelcome to The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer by James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Soccer in the Middle East and North Africa is played as much on as off the pitch. Stadiums are a symbol of the battle for political freedom; economic opportunity; ethnic, religious and national identity; and gender rights. Alongside the mosque, the stadium was until the Arab revolt erupted in late 2010 the only alternative public space for venting pent-up anger and frustration. It was the training ground in countries like Egypt and Tunisia where militant fans prepared for a day in which their organization and street battle experience would serve them in the showdown with autocratic rulers. Soccer has its own unique thrill – a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between militants and security forces and a struggle for a trophy grander than the FIFA World Cup: the future of a region. This blog explores the role of soccer at a time of transition from autocratic rule to a more open society. It also features James’s daily political comment on the region’s developments. Contact: incoherentblog@gmail.comView my complete profile